a world of trouble
by spheeris1
Summary: AU :: One-shot :: Desire, but lightly done :: Ashley POV :: Ashley/OC, possibility of Spashley :: 'Only a crisis could ever thrust them into something more and Ashley wishes for it.'


**You know when you hear a not-good noise in your car and then you take it to a mechanic... and that noise suddenly disappears? Whenever I get creatively stunted and then tell someone about it, my creativity will suddenly pop back up.**

**So it shall be.**

/ /

She's so damn sexy.

And you are not the only one to notice this fact. Your eyes are not the only ones watching her move, as she sits down and as she laughs about something and as she leans her head to the side-showing off the length of smooth neck for days and days-you are not the only one to see her and swoon.

You feel flushed. And you feel stifled by these feelings.

So, you drink your water and smile at the random conversation around the table. Maybe you speak. Maybe you talk and say things and they make some kind of sense.  
But you get a weird frown or two and you know that whatever came out of your mouth was nonsense.

She has rendered you to stupidity.

She has cut your tongue and turned you into a shadow of yourself.

She controls the strings at your back and she doesn't even know it.

So, you leave the table full of friends and you walk to the restroom, pushing past other women with other problems. The girl with the mascara trails down her face or the old lady with food stuck in her dentures, you don't have time for them.

You've got a heat in your gut. You've got an itch that you cannot find, so you sure as hell cannot scratch it.

You are on fire and it sounds like a fucking song and you don't feel like singing.

A piece of paper, soaked through with coldness, and it runs over your face.  
It feels good. So you do it again and again.  
But as comforting as distance is, you can't erase this mark on your soul and these permanent lines along your body.

There she is, in your head, and that smile turns sultry and she isn't laughing anymore.  
She's looking at you.  
She's only looking at you now.  
You are the one who has captured her wandering attention and aren't you special?

Aren't you the special one tonight?

The door opens and closes and a gaggle of young girls bubble up to the mirror.  
And you sigh. And you step away.  
And you don't want to go back out there, you don't want to face all you cannot have, you don't want to admit that you are like everyone else.

That you stare. That you try to impress. That you want her to the point of bursting.

She's so damn sexy, though.

And that ensures so much when it comes to you, doesn't it?

/ /

"Thought you might have fallen in..." Grant's voice is full of humor and Ashley sort of smiles, sort of smirks at him and sits back down.

Her eyes catch movement to the left and there goes that group of girls-too young to be here on their own but acting like they are well past twenty-one. Ashley remembers being like that, once upon a time, and those were fun days.

Who needs school when you are young? Who needs the approval of adults when you are eighteen? Who needs to plan for the future when you can't see beyond today?

And, just as easily, Ashley's eyes then move towards that pretty immovable object.

Spencer Carlin. Blue gaze wide as the fucking ocean and a smile for miles, whispering with some gossiping hound of a friend-Shayla? Shannon?-and then chuckling. And then sipping her drink-Corona, in a glass, what a joke-and leaning back in her chair.

It's not that they don't get along.  
They get along just fine. They somehow move in the same circles and her friends know Spencer's friends and here they are-at meals, at parties, at events that are just excuses to hook up and talk about it the next day.

They get along like acquaintances do. Like polite strangers do. Like passing people do, a nod on the street or room given on the subway.  
Only a crisis could ever thrust them into something more and Ashley wishes for it.  
Ashley wishes for it and is glad it never actually happens.

"Gelato, babe." Grant pipes up and places the bowl in front of her, spoon already resting in something bright red and probably delicious.  
She tilts her head to the side and places a sideways kiss to his temple.

They've been dating for five years or more or less or something. They tend to break up a lot, too. He is so fucking fussy, like a cat-independent to the point of not being around but then there he is, on your lap and demanding. And Ashley knows she can be flighty, so solid one second and then like air the next.

She's cheated on him once. It was stupid and she admitted it the next day. She did feel bad, it wasn't an act, she doesn't want to be at all like her father.  
Ashley's father was a wherever-you-leave-your-hat kind of man and it always made her disappointed that he couldn't just admit it.  
Admit you suck and maybe you can be forgiven-that's what she did and Grant forgave her and they worked things out as best they could.

Ashley's eyes have stayed in her head since then.

For the most part.

Until recently.

But she won't cheat this time. She won't stray or tell lies every night.  
If she can't stay away, if she can't deny it any longer, if that crisis really happens and Spencer Carlin is tossed into her life more fully...

"How is it?" Grant asks.  
"Good. Really good." Ashley answers.  
"Can I have a bite?"  
"Uh, no way. Get your own."

They grin at one another. Another couple laughs from the other end of the table. There is conversation to the right, something about basketball scores or wall street or just a string of unintelligible numbers to Ashley's ears.

And there, across the way, is wave of blonde hair. It slides and glimmers in the light. It curls just so around the head and falls softly at the shoulders.  
Ashley thinks it is probably the kind of hair that feels against the skin, feels like satin as it passes through the fingers, feels like heaven against your cheek in the middle of the night.

They are the golden strands that dreams are carried on.

Ashley clears her throat and no one seems to hear it. But no, that's not true.  
Spencer hears it and glances over and offers up a nice smile-kind and without intention-and Ashley automatically returns it.

"That's looks good. What flavor is it?" Spencer asks, her voice just one of many at this gathering.  
"Um, raspberry I think." Ashley replies, forcing her mouth to move and her voice to work.  
Those eyes, those fucking blue eyes, light up and the woman presses into the table's edge and that action causes a wonderful glimpse of cleavage to be shown and Ashley's stare is drawn down almost painfully.

"That is my favorite. Would it be weird to ask for a bite? You know, to see if it is good enough for me to order?"

This isn't a bus careening off a bridge. This isn't being shot and bleeding to death. This isn't a plane going down. This isn't a knife in an alley. This isn't an elevator plummeting to the basement.

But it might as well be all those things.

And Ashley tries to look away, tries to say the right things, tries to feel Grant beside her and remember that they've spent so much time with one another and it is comfortable and it is as real as anything else in this stupid world... right?

"Good luck. Ashley is real possessive with her food. Especially her desserts." Grant says happily and another friend, Malory, laughs from Ashley's other side.  
Suddenly this whole matter is for the entire table to enjoy and watch and make comments upon.  
"I once got into a fist fight with her over Oreos." Malory chimes in and everyone is amused.  
Ashley takes this chance while she can, though, and grabs this invisible rope of conversation, using anything she can to escape the parts of her that are begging to be let loose.

"Yea, because I just bought them and when I went to get one they were practically gone!"

People chuckle. Grant pats her knee affectionately under the table. Spencer is grinning and Ashley is telling herself to not respond, to not soak in the sight and revel in it and to not take it personally at all. That grin is for whoever wants it, not just Ashley.  
And Ashley shouldn't want that grin at all.

But, oh God, Ashley is in a world of trouble and she is the only one who knows it.

"Well, I guess I am out of luck then, hmm?" Spencer questions good-naturedly, fixing Ashley with a warm expression and seems ready to further this joke and is, inadvertently, closing a dangerous gap that Ashley hoped to maintain.

It is so foolish, you know? So dumb and silly. Just like young girls who can't see the forest for the trees. Just like youth and impulse and never knowing what comes next-and not caring.

Tonight, back at her apartment, she'll tell Grant that things are over.

Because, without thinking it over at all, Ashley fills that spoon up with gelato and holds it out halfway to Spencer Carlin.

"Just this once." Ashley says softly and with a slow smile spreading over her lips.

/ /

**-end-**


End file.
